Steve Magness
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I think it's a much larger percent than we realize. And I've seen it. I've seen it at the junior, the high school, the college level. Athletes who were insanely talented, better than those who became Olympic medalists, But they just kept getting in their own way. They weren't able to express that talent.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so there's been a lot of fascinating work on rugby in this where they look at all this stuff and a couple of different studies. But one of my favorite is this, is that they took rugby players and they essentially sat them down for a game and had them either prepare or look at what they did wrong the last game with a friend or a coach or a stranger.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And when they sat down and looked at what they did wrong so that they could improve going into this game, when they did it with a stranger, cortisol goes through the roof, testosterone plummets. When they did it with a friend or a coach who's supportive, testosterone goes up, cortisol goes down.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But most interestingly to me is this, is if that stranger was a big dude, so not skinny distance runner Steve, but linebacker, cortisol goes up through the freaking roof.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Even more than if it was a skinny stranger. Why? Why? Because like a big stranger is way more intimidating. So our brain reads the room and environment and says like, this dude is big. I don't know who he is. We're watching me suck right now. Brain default to threat mode.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, absolutely. So we have these sensitive windows. So these sensitive periods before and after games or matches or things that we care about.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, performance of some kind. And essentially what our brain is going on this mission looking for like evidence, are we prepared or should I hit the eject button? And right before a game, you're super sensitive where it's like anything that it picks up is going to be highly valued.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So if we look at the things that we did well or the successes or our plays the last game where we performed at a high level, then what happens is that it puts us in that challenge mode because our brain goes, okay, yeah, we are prepared for this. We've had success before, like release the testosterone and adrenaline, take it on. So we have to be very careful.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And this is why actuality, gosh, several years ago, I spoke with the NBA team and we talked about all this stuff and it came down to one of their biggest problems was this, is at halftime, their players were going into the locker room and the first thing they did was get on their phone, scroll through social media, right? And they're on social media.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
What do you think is on X, you know, about so-and-so player? It's like, you're trash. And they'd come out and they'd be flat, you know, out at halftime. And you're like, well, of course. you know, they're priming their minds with you suck. Like you're doing horrible. So we have to be really freaking careful, especially in that performance zone of what we're feeding our brains.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, I mean, there's always stuff. It's fascinating. I think the biggest thing that I take away is, or the other thing that is really important here is our mindset impacts things too. So our... what we're thinking can impact where our biology goes. And I know that sounds a little woo-woo, but it's true. And one of the ways that they've shown this is how we read the feedback coming in.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So what I mean by this is we all know we feel like anxious at some point before a performance. But whether we label that and interpret it as this is my body getting me prepared or this is my body freaking out will shift A, the interpretation, but B, will also have an impact on the downstream hormonal consequences on which way we go.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So the way I like to think about all this stuff is it's all kind of interconnected. It's again, think of your brain as saying like, I have all this information in the world and I have all these levers I can pull. In which way I go, I'm going to go based on our experience. So what I know from the past that has worked, but also all the information coming in.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So you as the athlete or the performer can influence that. So how you're looking at, you know, or remembering what worked in the past, A, sets the stage, your expectations set the stage. And then B, the information sources you're taking in.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
This is why, you know, this is why athletes use hype songs sometimes or like whatever have you, because that shifts that information source from being like, you know, I'm anxious to like, let's get pumped, let's go. And in certain situations, like that shifts our biology to be ready to perform better.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
First off, I'm glad everything's okay. Thank you, yeah, me too. You know, second off, that illustrates perfectly how our brain works. And there's so many crazy studies that show this, or experiences. We've all had similar things like that. One of my favorites is there, it was years ago, some psychologist did a study on... I'm drinking essentially like a milkshake. Right. And they just switched.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
They just had different labels. Like one said, you know, ice cream milkshake. And the other said like nutrition shake. Right. They were the same freaking drinks. But the one labeled milkshake, when they drank it, their little hormones, I forget exactly, I think it was ghrelin, the satiety hormone, shifted differently than when it was labeled as the healthy shake.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And again, same calories, same everything, just the label affected our little biological reaction. And I think too often we kind of just shrug this off, but of course it's how our brain works. It's just like this little thing in our head that has to use that external sensory information or internal feedback to decide, well, how am I supposed to make sense of this?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So if everything in the world is sending and telling you like, There's that smell again. You're having a heart attack.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
This is it. Of course your brain is going to be like, sound the alarm. Make him feel all the anxiety in the world. Shoot his heart rate through the roof.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And it's interesting because you generally see it in those who have performed well, either young or their first go out. So like the singer you were talking about crushes the first album. And then the follow up often elicits more pressure and anxiety. Why? Because it's like the expectations rise. And in fact, there's some research on, we call it the one hit wonder effect. right? You have your hit.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, I think this is it's often we see talent as like physical gifts. Right. You look at me and you're like, oh, of course, you're not going to be a world class weightlifter. Right. And if I tried to, I could train really hard and get better at it. but my genes aren't built that way, right?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, exactly. We have to understand that. And to a degree, our psychology, these underlying things, as you said, dopamine, adrenaline, all that stuff, it's we have different sensitivities. Now, I'm not trying to be super deterministic here because there's room to wedge and grow within this.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And what I would say is working with elite athletes is I've seen, or elite performers, I've seen a lot of people where I'm like, oh, you probably are like the stressed out, you know, overthinker. How are we going to get you to perform in the clutch? They're never going to be, I don't know, Michael Jordan.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But what they can do is get better at that skill if you acknowledge like, hey, here's your tendencies. And I can't just tell you, hey, try to be like Michael Jordan. No, we got to accept some of this. We got to accept that you're going to be more nervous. You're going to be more like hypersensitive to this stress. This is just who you are.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But let's develop some coping strategies or some like different tools that allow you to at least, you know, be okay on game day when it's ready to go.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so there's a ton of different directions. And what I'll say is that in the research tends to bear this out and practice is that there's nothing that works for everybody, basically. You got to find what works for you. So the best method is trial and error on seeing what clicks. We can attack this from a number of different ways.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I think the simplest ones are when you're in that moment, what I call is like, you've got to figure out how to like disrupt and realign kind of where your nervous system is going. And there's tricks we can use. For instance, if you just feel that overwhelming anxiety and stress, one of the simplest tricks to use is literally dunk your head or splash your head with cold water. Why?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Because we have this thing called the diving reflex, which whenever we get splashed or our face goes into cold water, heart rate tends to drop, nervous system shifts from sympathetic to parasympathetic, and we relax. So simple, easy tool to do that. Other things that tend to work and what research tells us is how we focus can shift this stress response in both directions.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So, for instance, if you feeling overwhelmed and nervous, what research tells us is if we can go broad focused, meaning think of like looking at the horizon rather than, you know, focused on a spot on the wall. what that does is it tends to shift us into a lower stress load. It shifts our body saying, okay, we're not narrowed, we're not stressed.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Alternatively, and this is going to sound contradictory, but I think it gets at the nuance of what this stuff entails and how it works. If you are standing, you know, about to take a penalty kick in football or soccer, right? One of the best things you can do is narrow as much as you can on where you're going to shoot because that will send the message that like, yes, this is important.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
You're the musician who finally has the breakthrough. And what happens is that follow-up is really difficult and often doesn't match. And researchers studied this actually in authors, and they found that one of the main reasons that that follow-up is so hard and there's so much pressure and expectations is because our identity literally shifts. Before we had our hit,
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
We can't deny it. I'm going to block out the rest of the voice and everything that's going on and just focus on this thing. And what research tells us is that that longer, slightly longer gaze will allow us to perform at a higher level.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So the gist I'm getting at here is, and there's a lot, is that what we're trying to do is figure out where our nervous system lies and then say, okay, how can we nudge or manipulate it so it's a place where we can be productive? And most of that relies on either turning down the volume so that we don't feel super overwhelmingly stressed, or alternatively,
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
giving it a focus point or something to do. This is where routines come into play and why they work. Because if you have that routine, you're giving your brain something to focus on and say, okay, forget all this overwhelming nonsense over here. I'm going to put on my shoes this way, et cetera, et cetera. But it's those two directions that tend to go or tend to help the best.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, so let's look at when we talk about routines. So the important point here is, and you kind of touched on this earlier, is we want the routine to gradually build us to where we're ready to perform at the task at hand. So what does that mean? Gradually build us physiologically and psychologically.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Physiologically, what it means is getting us, our body, whatever you're doing, ready to perform, warmed up, all that stuff. Psychologically, that routine is supposed to build towards giving you the confidence to do the task at hand. I'll give you a quick... There's a study and then some stuff that came out of a performance coach who works in the NFL, who I'm good friends with, who told me this.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
He said... When our routine includes practicing something that we're good at, we tend to get that bump in testosterone. When we practice something that we're not quite good at, that we have a little doubt on, we tend to get more cortisol. So the example that I'll use from research is coming from women's field hockey, Olympic level.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
If the forwards practice shooting goals, they got the bump in testosterone. If they practice defending, they got the bump in cortisol. Why? Because if you're a forward, you're used to trying to score. So apply that to your own life when you're looking at how am I preparing for the task at hand? Am I reinforcing that?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
With my routine, the things that I'm good at and I'm comfortable at, maybe practicing the sessions, sections of the speech or, you know, the drums that I've got down. Or are you going over and over again like, oh, no, this is where I'm going to screw up. I better ace this. That will shift your psychology. The time to work on the stuff you're not good at was hours and days ago.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
We were the guy expressing our talent, right? We were the singers saying, hey, I'm good at this. This is what I like to sing about. This is what I'm going to throw into the world. Who cares? Let's see what happens. Once we had that hit, our identity shifts to I am the singer. I am the singer that is known for being creative at this. Mm-hmm.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
You just got to go with it. And the last thing I'll say, and this kind of ties into routines and it ties back to what you said about being around friends. The biggest cheat you have is to be around others. Because the research is very clear. We evolved to share the load.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So there's a psychological theory called social baseline theory, which essentially says that we outsource part of our emotional regulation. So if it's us alone, we can't outsource that regulation where we have the entire burden. And if you think back when we're, I don't know, thousands of years ago on the Savannah, it makes sense.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Because if you were alone, when you were out hunting or gathering, you were screwed, right? If you're with your tribe mates and a lion pops up or a tiger or what have you, you at least have some sort of shot. So we evolved to outsource things. And what some fascinating research has shown is that our emotional state will go where those around us go.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So in sport, if a coach is losing his mind on the sideline, research tells us that players will feel more anxiety and pressure. If he's calm, cool, and collected and looks confident, even if he maybe isn't, but looks confident on the sideline, players feel more confident and have more positive emotions around them.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And the last thing I'll say on this part, which is the most fascinating part to me, is a group of researchers, several groups, took individuals and they stuck them at the bottom of a steep hill. And they said, essentially, how steep do you think this hill is and do you want to run up it? When they're alone, they would say, this hill is, you know, 20 degrees. Hell no, that sucks.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
When they were with a friend, they would judge the hill to be seven degrees shallower. And you're like, yeah, it's fine. This same research has been replicated in lifting weights or lifting heavy boxes. When you're with others, you judge the box to be to you guess that it weighs less. Right. And what researchers say is that that the sense of belonging or connection is
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
helps make the difficult seem more manageable because we know that we have someone else there that's going to have our back if we fall short.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And what research tells us is that when our identity cements around that thing, now anything that could potentially throw that off is seen as our threat. And our brain literally defaults towards threat mode. That's why the singer you mentioned struggles because he's on the stage not expressing what he knows. But his brain is going into, this is life or death. Like, run away from here.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, I mean, it will. And there's research on this. It will fundamentally shift how we deal with failure or setbacks or losses. So if we're with others in that like band situation or a team after a game and we're, you know, eating in the locker room and we bring our family in, if we do that. We handle failures and losses much better.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And again, some research shows we get that testosterone increase and cortisol decline instead of, if we're alone, that cortisol increase, that testosterone decline. Why? Because we're around others. There's a whole field that it's called social recovery.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
That looks at an athletic performance, not the like ice baths or the foam roller foam rolling or the gadgets that help for recovery, but how being around other people literally helps us physically perform. It's the secret of the San Antonio Spurs, the basketball team, phenomenally successful for a long period of time.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
It's why their coach, Greg Popovich, would institute these after-game team dinners. And again, I talked to some other NBA teams and they're like, oh, we tried the team dinners. No one showed up. I'm like, okay. But the point is that socializing with others helps us recover. And there's a hormonal reason for this too. When we socialize with others, we get a boost in the hormone oxytocin.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
What we know is oxytocin works against cortisol. So it dampens down that effect so that it doesn't run away. So instead of stewing over the loss, We're over it relatively quickly. And then we can learn and grow from it. Where in, you know, your or I profession, if we're standing on stage, we're kind of screwed because we don't have that.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
It's the same exact thing. And this is why you see, you know, sometimes the reaction, especially in American football, where after a lot loss like coaches just light into the athletes and players. What does that do? Does that resolve it quickly? No, it makes you feel like shit for a long time. You go home and like, my coach hates me. I got to figure this out. And it keeps you in that.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And then that moves it to that long-term memory. And coming back to what we said all the way at the beginning, like the brain is predictive. And when you're standing there, you know, about to start that next game, If that's in your long-term memory, that is what your brain is using to prepare. So similar to you smelling the popcorn, your brain's got to be like, I've been on this field before.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Get off the stage. Like, play dead. Whatever have you. And that's why he chokes.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I've seen that coach before. I know what's going to happen. And you just shrink, right?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
You know, that's one of my favorite topics to deal with. But absolutely. Because it's even more, I think, important because... There, you're not just ingraining long-term memory for an adult. You're ingraining the patterns of how to handle stress, failure, competition for essentially a lifetime.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, from the person who matters most in your life. And this is where it can go all wrong. I mean, so my wife is a elementary school teacher. So we go to way too many elementary school soccer and football and baseball games because her kids all ask her to show up.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And that's where I'm just like holding my hand over my mouth so I don't say anything because there are so many instances where I'm like, oh, dear God. This is where those kids who I used to deal with coaching college and professional athletes, this is where that fear has developed right here in front of me on that eight-year-old soccer pitch.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Drive it home? That's spot on. And this is the make or break part for youth sports. In fact, there's some research that shows that something like in the U.S., 70% of kids who try sports quit by the age of 13.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And if you look at why, one of the main contributors is fear of failure from an important adult, meaning a coach or a parent has like instilled this fear of failure so much that some 12 year old says like, you know what, I used to enjoy playing softball, but screw it. I don't want to deal with that feeling.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And then you've lost that kid, not only from something that is important maybe to them that they enjoyed, but I also think in today's world, you've lost them from like some sort of physical activity that could have set them up for like, this is normal to do in life.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I mean, it's how we internalize things. So our identity is shaped through kind of a phase of exploration. This is why when we're young, like our identity kind of bounces around, right? When you're elementary school, sometimes you go home from school and you say, hey, I'm a firefighter today. I want to be a policeman, right? You're in a heavy exploration phase.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
As we age, we move a little bit more from exploration to commitment. Why? Because we need some sort of secure sense of self. But what happens is that sticking ourselves in the arena where we're exposing ourselves to see, exposing whether we're good enough or not, right? And we have to face some sort of challenge or potentially failure.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Those are those keystone moments that allow us to kind of like shape the rest of our identity on whether we're going to be like resilient or two degree fragile, right? So failure comes in here and it essentially says, how are you going to internalize this story?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Are you going to internalize the story as, I'm Steve, who can bounce back from these things, can take on challenges, who, yes, cares about the wins or losses, but also cares about the team and the experience I have and the exploration of, am I getting better at this thing and the dedication to it? Or am I going to internalize the story as, not that I failed at this thing, but I am a failure?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And whenever we internalize it as I am a failure and I need to, it pushes us to protect our sense of self and we go into like what I'd call avoidant instead of resilient mode.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so I think before you have to look at where that's coming from. Because that fear is coming from someplace and often it's someone external to you. So I'll use some examples from my own coaching world is I've worked with athletes who are adults, who are college age, high performers, who would be lights out when we traveled and their parents weren't there.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
but at a home competition would just choke because their parents weren't, were there. And what you realized is tying back to that youth sports thing is they had this fear of failure coming up because they wanted to impress their mom or dad so much because their mom or dad essentially validated them through their athletic performance. So in that case, what do you have to do?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
You have to say, okay, how do we detach this a little bit? How do we create a little bit of space? Okay. And actually the research, whether it's from parent or not, where it comes from matters. The other part is, again, how do we create space there? There's research that shows that Well, caring deeply about a pursuit is important to get you driven.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
If you care so deeply that it becomes essentially a unidimensional self, meaning I am a writer and that is all I am, we're going to experience fear of failure at a much higher rate and choke at a higher rate.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Bingo. So what do you have to do in stocks? You diversify. It's the same when it comes to your sense of self and failure.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So again, research tells us is if you have what psychologists call self-complexity, meaning you recognize and realize that maybe you're a dad, you're a husband, you're a runner, you're a writer, you're a creative, you have all these different facets and all will vary in their importance, but all are a part of you. Then if you fail at one, you're going to be more resilient to bounce back quicker.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
This is why there's research that shows that athletes with hobbies tend to be more resilient under pressure than athletes who don't have hobbies. It's why if you look at, there's a long study on Nobel Prize winning scientists
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And I would bet you that any coach or somebody who spent enough time in this field has dozens of stories just like I do.
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#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
that found that Nobel Prize winning scientists were more likely to have a serious hobby or leisure activity than those who were a rung or two below who never reached that top. And part of it is because it makes you more resilient because like, again, it's not the end of the world. It hurts a lot.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Stress tends to narrow us. And what does perspective do? It zooms us back out. And we need both, right? We need to be able to go narrow and say like hard work, I'm going to work hard. Of course, hard work matters. But if we only narrow and we go narrow and narrow, identity shrinks, hard work is the answer to everything. Like the thing that made us good is going to be our enemy.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And I'll validate what you said on essentially, you know, Playing Nintendo Switch, I don't know about smoking weed. For athletes, I can't tell them to. They might get banned. But what we see there is that with about, I would say, 90% of the lead athletes that I've worked with, I've had to get them to go in the other direction. They're already good at being obsessive.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
what you have to do is get them to let go. And however you can get them not let go fully, but they're never going to be able to let go fully because they're like performers who are strivers. But if you can get them to let go just a touch, that's where it comes through. And actually in the book, I tell the story of Tony Hawk, who his friend and fellow skateboarder told him when he was stuck.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
He said, risk not winning. Which essentially meant like, hey, dude, let go of the achievements and trying to do the thing and just get back to skating. And that's when he did his famous 900 trick, because like often the thing that we're good at, like traps us and narrows us and we got to go in the other direction to, you know, break through.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I mean, essentially what it is, is it's being open to novelty. It's being open to failure. It's being open to shifting and seeing your perspective. It's kind of the way I would explain it is it's kind of going back and having almost like recess for adults. Because if you look at exploration... Exploration is the heart of play, right?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So I have two toddlers, girls, and if you look at how they learn, they essentially are just exploring the world and dabbling with different things and jumping off stuff that they shouldn't jump off, but getting hurt and not that bad. And what that does is it allows them to figure out how the world works and where the paths are that they can go explore more.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And I think as adults, what happens is our identity cements. We get known for one thing. We're really good at one thing. So we feel comfortable on that situation. But when we feel comfortable in it, we default towards protection and avoidance. And what we need to do in our life is have things that give us back a little of that sense of play.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So as a writer, that might mean don't just research things for your next book, your next article. Go read interesting things. Maybe that means fiction, right?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Right. It's that, not what does social media tell me I should do at. And then I think other things are perspective shifters. So there's a large body of research that tells us that getting out in nature shifts us into exploration mode. It tells us doing interesting things.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So there's some research on dating that shows that dates that are what we call or what psychologists call more self-expansive, meaning they're challenging, difficult, maybe, you know, bring make you feel alive a little bit doing daring things.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Those kinds of dates are often more successful than going to the movies or getting coffee because it makes us feel alive and it opens up our self to be open to getting to know this person sitting across from us. So the answer for exploration to me is do perspectives changing things and do real things in the real world that make you feel alive.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, to a degree, it is. Goals serve two purposes. They're motivators, and then they tell us what to focus on or what's important. What research tells us, there was a big meta-analysis that came out actually not too long ago that showed us that process goals work pretty well and that outcome goals really aren't tied to performance, which is kind of counterintuitive.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But the reason there is because often those outcome goals are motivating for simple things that we can easily achieve. But once it becomes difficult, those outcome goals essentially become glaring signs that tell you that you haven't achieved what you want yet.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
It's that comparison piece. I mean, I was having a conversation with the author Ryan Holiday the other day, and we were saying this similar thing to what you're expressing with Mark. And he said, essentially, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said, yeah, you kind of want your first book. or your first thing to be like pretty good, but not like off the charts good.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Right. You've set this huge standard. And of course, when you're looking up at it, it stops being inspirational or aspirational. And it starts telling you that you're not good enough and you may never be good enough. So instead, using process goals, which are essentially like, what are the steps that I need to take to give me a shot? Those tend to work well.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And if we look at values, values are important. But what's really interesting to me is that a lot of the research tells us that our values tend to go where our environment goes or our groups or belonging goes. So the most important thing is, yeah, know what you value.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But the most important thing is probably surround yourself with people who value similar things, whether that's like hard work or connection or drive or, you know, fairness, whatever it is that matters to you. Your values are going to go where that group tends to go.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so one of it is, I think the big part on this is defining success and defining your comparison point. So what does success mean to you? Because perfectionism at its heart is this idea that in order to feel valid, I have to achieve X, Y, and Z and do it in X, Y, and Z way. It's that perfectionism piece.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And what research tends to tell us is that the higher the level of perfectionism, the higher likelihood of self-sabotage and choking in sport as well. So what we need to do is get really clear on, okay, like let's shift the bar, right? Shift the comparison piece on like, what matters? How am I defining success? What does success look for me in this endeavor?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And then like, what is my comparison piece? Or what am I, how am I measuring that along the way? And essentially, the way I like to look at it is move from perfection to some sort of mastery or some research in sport calls it like shifting from perfection to excellence because excellence is still very good.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But it comes without that negative inclination of like everything has to work out perfectly to to get there.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so a lot of the perfectionism is a reframing. But the other part of it is what I'd call interventions that put you in a place where you do something wrong or not up to your perfectionist standards. And have to sit with that. So it's almost like dealing with anxiety and realizing that it's going to be okay. Mm-hmm.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Because if you're pretty good, you gain some confidence. You're like, oh, this is good. I can write again. I can do this again. But you're not trapped by the thing. And too often what happens is we have that mega success and it's almost like we become trapped. And I'm glad that, you know, Mark and the other guy you mentioned, we're able to see that because too often what happens is we don't.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
At the heart of perfectionism, although it's different, there's a lot of similarities, which is like, if I don't do this exactly the way that I want, I have this intrusive anxiety that pushes me to go back and do the thing. So to deal with it, we have to do the same thing we do with OCD, which is essentially in very small bites, be imperfect and
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Stare at that thing that is imperfect and sit with it until that anxiety dissipates and you realize it's going to be okay. Like, I need to leave it.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, so you can check out the book, Win the Inside Game, wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all that stuff. And then I'm on social media, X, Instagram, YouTube, all at Steve Magnus, where I just talk about the mental and physical side of performance all day, because that's what I like to nerd out about.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
That is my life right now. I'm just trying to survive. No thriving going on. But I appreciate you, Chris.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
This is what you see in, you know, child film stars. This is what you see in athletic prodigies. I mean, to a lesser extent, I felt this myself as an athlete. I ran a 401 mile as a high schooler and I was the number one, you know, junior athlete in the United States that year in the mile. And that felt great until I realized like, oh, shit.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I essentially am going to go down off this ledge because everybody else who is a little bit slower, a little bit slower, my same age is going to come for me. And inevitably, just based on math and the law of averages, someone's going to get me and I'm now going to be second or third or fourth or fifth. And I got to tell you, I wasn't prepared for it. And it sends a kind of, you know,
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
It just messes up your mind. So it's almost like you want to be that trajectory piece is figure out a way how to be good enough to keep going, to keep exploring, but not so much with the overwhelming. And one last piece I'll add on this is you actually see this when you study world-class athletes who make it to the top of their sport. Some are prodigies, right?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Some are the LeBron James that just have the outside talent and they have the other goods with them. But a lot of what the research shows is that it's often that slightly next rung down that has a lot of talent, but had to struggle and fight and figure out how to do things that ultimately makes it because they didn't have the pressure.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And more so, they were able to go through the struggle and the ups and downs and navigate it and figure out a way to get through, which kind of created the resilience that allowed them to get to the top.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, like anything, it's a mix of both. And we can see that, right? So on the acute level, for instance, we can look at some of the biological hormonal drivers that happen with choking, right? So for instance, we have a stress response. Do you have more cortisol or do you have more testosterone and adrenaline?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
We can manipulate that a little bit based on like how we frame the competition, you know, our confidence going into it, how we're seeing it. But there's also like underlying biology that, you know, depending on this gene will affect your stress reactivity, right? So some people are born essentially like hyper responders to stress and go more cortisol and some people aren't.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And like that helps them perform under pressure. But I do think that on the flip side, the social cultural aspect, I think it's more important now than ever. Because what we know about this choking is that people don't choke in practice. They choke when they're on stage.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And psychology research tells us that part of that is because the public expectation and perception is one of our biggest threat responders, triggers. And nowadays, if you think about it, even for the youngest developing... we're almost all on stage at some point. That stage could be social media, Instagram or TikTok or what have you, but that didn't exist.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
30 years ago, you weren't practicing your craft or promoting your craft to everybody else. You're just practicing on the field or track or in the auditorium by yourself without too many people judging. So I think in a way we have this biology that is kind of loaded to help or hinder us.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But we've got this social, cultural, kind of global world when we were meant to be local that has just like pulled the trigger and said like, screw it, you're all going to deal with this pressure to an enormous degree and have to figure it out.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Yeah, absolutely. So pressure is just this. It's how we react to stress. So we can interpret that in multiple different ways. But when we look at stress, it's not good or bad. It's just our brain making a prediction for how do we handle the challenge before us. And I've talked about cortisol and testosterone and adrenaline. The best way to think about it is this.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
We have a bunch of levers we can pull. both from a hormonal standpoint, from a nervous system standpoint, and from like a psychological standpoint. And which lever we pull depends on our brain kind of saying like, huh, what's going to help us survive this situation? So that's why if we look at stress or pressure, a little bit helps us perform well, right? We don't run our fastest in practice.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
We have to do it in a competition. Why? Because that pressure increases what we call physiological arousal, which says, hey, body, prime your muscles to perform. Give me a little nervous energy or adrenaline to get my mind sharp and to essentially enhance the signal to noise ratio so we can see what we have to do clearer and the feedback coming in that helps us perform clearer.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
But what happens if we go too far or we pull the levers that our brain goes like, hey, standing up on that stage is going to be like a life or death event. Like if you mess up, your career is over. If that's the case, your brain is just going to go like, good. We'll make sure you don't get up there.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
And that's what all that anxiety or that fear or that rumination that I don't want to be here comes from. So the bottom line is stress isn't good or bad. It's just meant to prepare. But the degree of it So how much we feel and then the direction of it, meaning is it directed towards seeing the thing as a challenge that I can take on and overcome?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Or is it directed towards this is a threat and I need to avoid or protect? And protect could mean physically, but more so it means like, you know, protect my ego, my sense of self from being embarrassed or damaged.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So a number of things. Again, some of it is like our biology and genetics, but a large part of it is, again, come back to that brain is predictive. What evidence is it using to predict? So if we're taking on some sort of task or pursuit, it's essentially, are we prepared for the demands that we're going to face?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So if I sign up for a marathon and I've put in all the training and I've got a coach and I've followed my training program and I've done the work, my body rightfully says on the starting line, a marathon's going to kind of suck no matter what, but we can see that you've prepared. Therefore, we're going to go a little bit more challenge instead of threat.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
If instead, off of a lark, or I think, you know what? I'm a runner. I got this. And I don't train and I show up. Your body is smarter than you. You might try and fake it until you make it, but it's not going to work. Your biology is going to go... yeah, yeah, you're not prepared. Think threat. We're going to try and convince you to drop out of this race by feeling overwhelming anxiety.
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
So a large part of what way we go depends on, are we prepared for the demands of the task? So that means accurate appraisal of you, yourself, what you're capable of and what you've done, and then accurate appraisal of the task itself. Like, What is this going to challenge? And then the last part that plays a big role is essentially, is the juice worth the squeeze?
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
Meaning, what are the risks and rewards here? The rewards could be intrinsic, could be extrinsic, but what benefit do I get from this? And then what's the risk? If it is literally, I fail at this task and it's my job, we'll go to threat mode. If it's, I lose this game and yeah, that sucks, but I'm not a professional athlete or my life or career isn't dependent on this,
Modern Wisdom
#897 - Steve Magness - How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure
I'll be more likely to go to challenge mode because the threat is low and the reward is probably higher.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
So for example, you know, often if you look at advice given for obtaining success in the workplace or the sports life, the advice is centered around things like going all in, being obsessive, finding that thing that you're so passionate about that you can't stop. But what research tends to show us is that in the real world, that's not actually what the most successful people experience.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
So for example, Nobel-winning prize scientists have more outside hobbies and interests than those scientists a couple rungs below. If you look at entrepreneurs, there was a wonderful study on 5,000 entrepreneurs that found that those that kept their day job tended to perform better than those who quit initially and went all in.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
So in your life, I would say instead of focusing narrowly, we need to create a robust and broad sense of self or mic. So that means not just saying, I am a podcast host and this is all that I do,
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
but realizing that you have hobbies, you have interests, you have these other things that provide status and significance because what that does is it allows you to perform out of a place of joy and exploring your potential instead of fear of like, oh gosh, this is it. If I don't nail this interview, it's not I failed at this podcast, but I am a failure myself.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
It is. And in fact, there's some wonderful research that shows us that we tend to move towards this direction partially because of the culture around us. So especially in the US, our culture is that success is self-defining. For much of history, we brushed off our failures. So for instance, in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, They said they blamed the god of crops if their crops failed.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
That was to put a little bit of space between their activity and the event, the failure, so that they'd try again. In the 1900s, what researchers found is that with the implementation of bank credit, the We actually had to judge people. So banks labeled people good for nothing, meaning they weren't going to be able to pay back the loan.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
And ever since then, the introduction of moving towards like, I am a failure if I can't do the job or complete the success increased in our vocabulary. So you can see it as this internalization of the, you know, making success or failure a virtue.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
First off, the key is it's really hard. If what got you there, it's really hard to pull away from it because you're probably thinking, well, I've had some success. I've been pretty good at what I do here.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
But if you look at, for example, when I talk to a wide range of Olympic athletes and then some research actually on Olympic swimmers, what generally tends to happen to us is the kind of narrow world gets us going. But at some point, we face adversity, we face failure, we face something that kind of throws us for a loop.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
And what research tells us and what the Olympians I've talked to told us is if they went that path and they doubled down, It tended to end poorly, right? They didn't perform better. They started to see their pursuit as a job and then a chore. But what researchers found is if they shifted their mindset from this performance view and towards a quest view, meaning It's partially about the result.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
Yeah, the result matters, but it's also about the journey. It's what I'm discovering about myself and my team and my friends and family along the way that also matters. What that does is free you up a little bit. So on an individual level, what that means is I'm not asking you to go...
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
you know, from I care about outcomes and results to Zen monk on the other end of the spectrum, what I'm asking you to do is find small ways to let go just a little bit. So instead of having outcome orientated goals, start switching towards process-orientated goals. Research shows that this will stoke our intrinsic motivation and allow us to have more resilience over the long haul.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
What's a process-orientated goal? It's essentially looking at, yeah, where are you trying to go? What you actually want to achieve? Defining those steps. What are the things and activities you need to get there? And then just forget about the outcome whatsoever and just keep coming back to those steps or the process. Uh, that is the important part.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
Yeah, absolutely. So let's use athletics, sports. It's the easiest way to do this. So let's say you want to win the state championship. That is an outcome goal. Maybe you have to run a certain time or swim a certain time. That could be also the goal as well. But that is defining the outcome.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
Instead, what you say is maybe with your coach or your teammates, you say, okay, what are the steps that I need to take that give me the best shot to get there? And those steps might be, well, I need to be in the pool training five days a week for an hour long.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
I need to maybe twice a week decide that I need to do some strength training or I need to hire a sports psychologist to meet with them once a month. Whatever those steps are that give you the best shot, that's what you need to define as the goal and the focus. And then when you complete your season, you don't look back.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
and say did i win the state championship or not you say did i follow my process if i followed my process then i did the things that i needed to give myself a shot and win or lose like that's all i can ask for that seems like that might be hard to do if you're somebody who is more results oriented to not look back and go damn i lost the championship i was this close Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
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Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
So some wonderful research showed that when we try to lift a heavy box by ourselves, we judge it to be about 15 pounds heavier than if we just have a friend nearby. The same goes if we're standing at the bottom of a very steep hill. If it's you alone, you're going to judge that hill to be about seven to eight degrees steeper than if it's you with a friend.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
When we feel connected, when we feel secure in our world and our sense of belonging, it shifts how we see these challenges.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada.
Something You Should Know
Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful
So, for example, Nobel-winning prize scientists have more outside hobbies than those scientists a couple rungs below. If you look at entrepreneurs, those that kept their day job tended to perform better than those who quit initially and went all in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
How do we stop that spiral or that rock rolling down the hill and gaining momentum? How do we stop it early enough so that we can do something about it? And I think the misconceptions around toughness is that our kind of old school model tells us only one path, which is that grit it out, like fight the thing, and often don't pay attention to your emotions or feelings, like ignore them.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Well, sometimes that works, generally on easy stuff. On hard things where it actually matters, it backfires. Because if I try and avoid the thing, if I try and resist the thing, we have a saying, what we resist persists. How do we learn to listen to our body better? How do we change our self-talk? How do we change our focus to get us out of these spirals and navigate these situations?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Yeah, we'll start with the teacher one because I see this all the time. Okay. Teachers have one of the hardest jobs. And it's sometimes a thankless job, but they do amazing jobs. So I love supporting my teachers out there. Here's what happens. Teaching is hard. You get home, you're overwhelmed.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And the tendency is to be like, okay, I'm so overwhelmed that I'm just shutting down and I can't do anything else. Mental toughness is realizing that like, you're still going to have to show up the next day. And because you care about your job and the kids, show up and teach them to the best of your ability. How do you get through that overwhelm and get yourself back in that position?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So for a teacher, it could be something as simple as, what is my... get home, shut down, and reset routine that allows me to kind of deal with that stress, take it off, and say, okay, just for a couple hours, I'm going to get myself in a place where I rejuvenate and then can get a good night's sleep and then tackle the job again tomorrow.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
With, I think you said job search, I think there is handling rejections, right? It's because that feels personal, right? You apply for the job, you do everything that you can to put yourself in the best position. And someone essentially says, you're not good enough or we don't want you. And in that moment, that can hit deep.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And toughness is realizing and figuring out how do I create the space between that almost failure in my identity and who I am? To be able to say, I get it, that person didn't select me, but that doesn't mean that I'm not worthy as a human being and that I'm not capable of doing this job. They just didn't see it. How do I get back on the horse?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Same thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So here I take them through a process. First, you can't deny that it hurts, right? You have to accept and sit with it and live with it and realize that this thing you cared about, you fell short in. And that sucks. There's no getting around it. There's no faking it. It just sucks. So that's number one. Number two is you've got to get your brain and body out of what I call stress and protect mode.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Okay. Where you're feeling all these stress hormones, right? Which pushes your brain to be like, protect myself, avoid the thing, shut down, which is our acute response to failure. And you've got to get it into, how do I almost get into a learning and growing mode? And the best way to do this is simply socializing with friends.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
When we're around other people, there's research that shows that... When you're socializing with other people, you produce a hormone called oxytocin.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It's like a bonding hormone. It's what's actually produced when women have babies to help them bond with the child. Same thing occurs for us in adults. And what research tells us is it counteracts the kind of negative stress hormones that That make us feel like worthless or alone or whatever have you after stress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So the best thing you can do is with athletes, I always tell them that after the game, if you lose, guess what? Go have pizza with your friends. Like go eat. And what that does is it shifts you out of that mindset. And then the last part of this process is you got to build yourself up. You got to give yourself evidence that you are worthy. And here I like to do it in two different ways.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
One, I like to have people have what I call an evidence journal. Okay. Which is write down things where you went through something tough and came out on the other side.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So some of the things I like to do is like look at How consistent were you when you were preparing for this? Did you get your five days a week of training? And people can look back and say, I did it. I did the training plan. I showed up. Did you prioritize yourself? Did you, the day before the job interview, did you get the sleep in that you wanted to to prepare for the thing?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You're looking for how do I give myself the evidence that I gave myself the best shot that I could. And the other thing that I like to do is look through past kind of experiences and moments where it's like, hey, I came through this thing. And the reason is pretty simple is our brain often has a negativity bias.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
where we just latch onto and remember the times that it didn't go well. Why? Because they sting. Like we remember the things that sting more. We forget all the times where it's like, hey, we showed up for practice when it was raining. You know, we showed up for the job even when we were tired the night before and we still got it done. Those things just go out the window.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So we've got to give our brain that information that reminds us like, hey, I've been here before. I've gone through some tough things. Like you are capable of this and more.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
This is very common, even at the elite level. Because often you think like, oh, these people have bulletproof minds.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It's not true. What do you mean it's not true?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Here's what I learned. I used to think that. I used to think, oh, there's something different about them. But what you realize is the same problems that I'll literally talk about with a high school kid navigating the SAT and basketball team tryouts. are the same thing that I'll talk about with someone who's made the Olympic team and trying to show up to the Olympics.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Our human stress response, which makes us see the negative, to think that we're not good enough, to think that we're gonna be overwhelmed and freak out on the starting line and not be able to show up how we wanna show up.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Yeah. This is why choking happens to the best of the best. This is why Simone Biles got, you know, the twisties. Because it's not anything to do with her being weak or anything. She's the total opposite of that. Amazing. But our biology is wired the same. And although the arena might be different...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Our brain doesn't know the difference between what feels like a lot of pressure when we're at the high school gymnasium versus the Olympic Stadium where we see hundreds of thousands of people. It's still pressure, and we still feel it the same way. It's not like it's proportional to the amount of people who are viewing us.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
This is some of the most fascinating research I've come across, and it's called the winner and loser effect. And what happens is we change our stress response Based on the outcome of the event or even more so our expectation of the event. What I mean by that is after you win, you tend to get a bump in testosterone. And this has been found in both men and women. Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You get a bump in testosterone. And that increase in testosterone makes you think, hey... I'm going to be more confident going into this next thing. I can take on this challenge. And what tends to happen is next time you step into the arena, your brain goes, hey, remember last time we got that bump in testosterone? Let's do that again.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So we're more likely to approach whatever it is we're taking with more challenge, more testosterone. And we have what psychologists call a challenge response. If on the flip side, is if you lose, and then especially if you do win that loss, You think it is like overwhelming. This is the end of the world. My life is over. I'm never going to be able to do this thing again. You have more cortisol.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And what your brain learns is it says, hey, this place really sucks. So next time we face something similar, before you even step into the arena, your brain defaults to producing more cortisol to try and convince you to avoid the situation you're getting in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Absolutely. Spot on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Two things. One is we can influence this to a large degree based on our expectations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So what research tells us is if we set the expectations which are based on, essentially our brain goes, what are the demands that we're facing and what are we capable of?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So if you're sitting there and you're saying, I got broken up with, I'm putting myself back in the arena, I'm going on the date, the demands are, I'm going to have to talk to someone who I don't know very well and open up and put myself out there. Now your capabilities, because last time it didn't go very well, your brain goes like, I don't know if you're capable of this. Right. I don't know.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So what do you have to do in that situation? You have to, you have two options. You can say, okay, I'm going to set the expectations and sometimes lower them a little bit. Say, hey, this is my first date. I'm not trying to set the world on fire. I'm just going to put myself out there and go talk to them. Lower those expectations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I don't have to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Yes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And the second part is improving that your capability side. Okay. Which is in athletics, what do we do? We train. You practice. You practice. In life, you can do the same thing, right? right? If you are struggling and afraid of going on that first date, go call up a friend and say, hey, we're going to practice some conversations together. I'm going to talk about myself.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
We're going to role play this. And it sounds a little silly, but what it does is your brain goes, okay, I've been here before. If you keep being afraid of that job interview, then you want to go do some mock job interviews.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And the good thing is this, is when you control the environment, right, and you're doing it with friends or family or someone who doesn't entice that fear around you, then your brain doesn't automatically default and you can train that
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I think I've had a diversity of experiences that you outlined, which has made me realize that my early on view of toughness, which was only through sport, was kind of wrong. Meaning I grew up in the like, you know, no pain, no gain, like just push. And that's what I thought.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And the other thing that really, I think was an aha moment, which was during my, I think my first book is I got to interview a guy named Matt Billingsley, who is a world-class drummer, who is now the drummer for Taylor Swift. And It was one of my first big interviews where I'm like, this is awesome. Let's go.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I'm like, just tell me about what it's like to be on stage with, you know, 100,000 screaming people and you doing your thing. And he starts walking me through how he's preparing. And as I'm listening to this, all I'm thinking in my mind is like, this is how I would mentally prepare for race. What was he saying? Well, the thing that struck me is he said...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I don't really drum much before the concert. He said, I already know how to drum. What I'm doing is, first I'm getting my body loose. I'm going through all these stretching and things to get my body feeling good. And then I'm getting my mind loose. Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Which is like just rehearsing the beginning of a couple of different songs so that I can get in that groove in the state of performance that I need to get in. And he walked me through all that. And I said, I said, this is the same kind of stuff that I do for race. And what it made me realize is that performance is performance.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It's setting up your environment well.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So what that means is, like, you prime yourself to perform. This is why athletes put on their special race day shoes. They put on their jersey. Matt had the drumsticks that he used for, you know, concert times. He's got everything lined up where this is what it's going to be. I put myself in the environment that's going to invite the action that I want to take.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It's setting your mindset right. What am I trying to do? Am I seeing this as an opportunity to take on? Or is this thing that is causing this overwhelming anxiety or feeling like a threat? And I think what I realized, it's not just from Matt's story, but also others, is it's the same stuff. As I said, my wife's a teacher. Early in her career, she was a world-class runner. She represented the U.S.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
at a half-marathon world championships. No big deal, you know. You two are going to have really fast kids, you know that? Don't put the pressure on our two-year-old now. I'm sorry. But what I realized is that, again, when she got into teaching, she takes the same mindset. She's like, I want to be great at this. And what you realize is like, okay, what does that take?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Consistently showing up, putting in the training, being prepared for the next day and priming yourself. Okay, how am I going to get into the mindset where I am like enthusiastic and energetic because kindergartners, guess what? You got to keep their attention. And you can't do that by just walking in the door and being like, okay, I'm here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Like, let's talk about our colors and ABCs or what have you. You've got to think about the tactics that you're going to use.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Who do you want to be? Who do you want to show up as? Like, that's it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Absolutely. Who do you... Because here's the thing is, and this is something else that people often don't get, is if you look at some of the elite performers... is that who they are on game day when they step out on the field is a little bit different than who they are at home. How so? So I'll give the example of Aaron Judge, the baseball player for the Yankees. He puts it like this.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
On the field, I want to be 99, which is his number. 99, and I'm paraphrasing, is aggressive. He plays hard. He wants to win. When I take that jersey off, I'm no longer 99. I'm Aaron. You know, Aaron gets along with his family. He doesn't need to be hyper competitive at everything. He can let things go.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
But you see that all the time with athletes because what happens is like we all have kind of different states we can get into.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You're spot on. Who do you want to be in this situation? And I think too often we don't put the thought and care to align ourselves with that action.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
At that time, I think in the history of the US, only five high schoolers had broken the four-minute barrier. So it's something that basically never happened. And I came just shy. And I still can picture it to this day. There's four laps around the track. Every lap needs to be under a minute.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So you're literally watching the clock and you're seeing it and you're like, I'm still under, I'm still under, I'm still under. And going into that last hundred meters, I can see that clock and realizing, oh no, I'm going to be right at it or just shy. And then I remember crossing that line. There's like 30 seconds before the results come out. I'm staring at the results board.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And then I see myself four minutes and one second. And it's just devastating. Because you see this thing that is your goal. It was literally written on the wall of my high school bedroom where this is the thing that I'm going to do that is going to define myself. I didn't care about anything else in high school. Nothing. Parents couldn't get me to care about anything except running.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I fell short. And for a while... I think that got to me. I couldn't do it. I put everything into it and found out that I wasn't good enough. Everything I learned about performance came as a result of being like, okay, let's analyze this. Let's figure out how do we get on the other side of feeling this ultimate failure and making it into something worthwhile and good.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And that's where my search for understanding the mental side of sport came from. If I didn't let go and pull the other way just enough, I wasn't going to be able to fulfill my potential because every race was going to feel like life or death, and it did. We all have our four-minute miles.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
We all have those things where we create that story in our head where it's like, oh, this is what I care about deeply. This is what I'm obsessed with. And we can't because we care about it. We think that if we just let go a little bit, that that means, oh, that means I'm weak. That means I'm not all in. That means that I'm not actually striving for that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
But what it actually means is it allows that inner game to flourish because our brain goes like, okay, yeah, yeah. Like the four minute mile matters. Like getting that job, selling this many books, whatever. It matters. Like, let's be real. But it can't be the only thing. We've got to have something else pulling in the other direction.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
What happens is when we tie our identity to that external pursuit, it makes us fragile instead of resilient. Because our brain goes, if I don't get this goal... then it literally is life or death. I am not worth anything. We don't perform best in that situation. We need to take a little bit of the pressure off. We need to have that robustness where you realize that I am secure in who I am.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
In win or lose, it might sting, but I'm still who I am. I'm still surrounded by those who love and support me. They're still going to be here. And that's where we perform best at because we get to take those risks instead of feeling like, oh gosh, here it is. I'm going to fall short again. Brain freaks out.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It does. And it runs counter to just about everything we're told. Completely. Just go all in, be obsessed, only care about this thing. And the research, as you said, on Nobel-winning scientists shows it's different. There's research on entrepreneurs, that the ones who are more likely to actually succeed don't quit their day job early on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
There's research on athletes that show that they generally, those who make it to the top of the top, are more diversified in both their sports early on and then their later interests. Because what it does is it makes us resilient. Because if we fail at the one thing, and that's all that matters, it comes back to our brain and the alarm. We produce a ton of cortisol.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
your brain says, I'm losing, my identity is at stake, like shut down. If we have other things in our life that we care about, that give us something else to think about, give us other pursuit to kind of do interesting things on, then even though the loss stings, you still have that resilience in your life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
what you see is they prioritize consistency over intensity, meaning they don't just shoot for the magic day where everything aligns. They're like, hey, I've got to figure out how to show up day after day, even on the bad days, even on the days when things aren't going well, where maybe we don't get the full workout in, but we
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
get something in because they know that if they stack enough solid days after days, then that is what leads to greatness. In fact, way back when I was a college coach, I tracked this. I tracked how many times did people show up to practice in workouts and how many times did they miss them? And then I ran a correlation between improvement and who showed up. And guess what? Strong correlation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
The people who showed up and didn't miss days performed better. In fact, the person who showed up the most during that period was this young lady who came in. And I kid you not, her freshman year... In a race of 100 plus people, I think she was 99th out of like 101. By her senior year, she was qualified for the first round of the national championships. Wow. Huge jump.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And if you looked at the data, out of everybody on the team throughout that period, she missed the least amount of practice. She missed the least amount of workouts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And so much of it is the story that we tell ourselves in our head because we get locked in these negative stories that, again, define us as, I'm not good at this thing. And if you talk to, again, elite performers, could be athletes, whoever it is, what you realize is they start to tell themselves stories that are about growth and agency, meaning taking control of the situation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
What can I do about it? Versus stories that are kind of push us down and where we can't do things about it, where there is no path forward. So it's all about figuring out how to tell yourself that story.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So number one is I tend to give them an action.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Actions work better. Okay. So instead of telling someone, hey, Mel, you need to relax. Like in the history of the world, I don't think telling someone to relax has ever worked. Yep. So instead I say, hey, Mel, shake out your arms. Get a little loose. Okay. And what happens is your body goes like, okay, I'm going to let go some of this tension. Therefore, I'm going to relax. Action is number one.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Number two is what do they need to be focused on? Because generally what happens is stress, like either we narrowly focus on the negative, see all the bad things, or our brain goes like scattershot and it's like all over the freaking place. So what we have to do is say, okay, what matters? I'm going to focus on that. There's research on this.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
If you're a field goal kicker and you're feeling pressure and your mind's all over the place, what you literally do is say, focus on that spot right there, stare at it, and kick it there. And that will help you perform. And we can do that in our other aspects of life, which is give it a narrow goal or narrow thing to latch onto and tell yourself to focus on that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
In the third person.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Start with the smallest step forward where you can make progress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So in this example, it might be take the thing that is staring you in the face that you spend money on that you know you shouldn't and just focus first on that. Maybe it's every morning you go get your special foam latte at Starbucks and you say, this is what I need. This spending habit is, I know I shouldn't do it every day, so I need to fix this. That's it, narrow in on that one.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And you minimum viable progress. So maybe it's instead of every day I say, I'm gonna, you know what, next week I'm gonna go two days a week. And that's what I'm gonna allow myself to do. And what happens is you make progress and you get these small wins. And small wins give us a bump in this like feel good hormones that say, hey, look, Steve, you're making progress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And if we can stack enough small wins, then that allows us to take the next step in the next big thing. And that's all it is. It sounds almost ridiculously simple. But what prevents us from taking on the hard things is we only see the hard things. Mm-hmm. Right? Again, I love running, so too many running examples.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
But if someone who had never run came up to me and said, hey, I want to go to a marathon, I wouldn't say, great, we're going to tackle a marathon. I'd be like, no, no, we're going to go on walks. And then when you get to your street, I want you to jog the street home. Because all you're trying to do is say simple, small progress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And if you can stack that day after day, that is what creates that mental muscle that And gives your brain evidence of like, okay, I've made progress. And it stokes that motivational fire.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
If we want to train discomfort or train toughness, We've got to do the very small things that make us realize that, hey, this discomfort is just a signal. And sometimes that signal is like accurate, meaning we've got, you know, you sprain your ankle and you need to listen to that discomfort, right? It's a pain signal that's like, fix this, get off of your foot, like take care of it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So here's a non-athletic example. We all are kind of addicted to our phones. Yes. And what happens is, I bet you, the listener, have experienced this, is that you feel in your pocket, your phone vibrating. And you're like, oh, there's that buzz. And you reach for your phone, you pick it up, and there's no notification. It's called phantom vibration. It occurs in about 90% of us.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Depending on the research, but yes, about 90% of people feel it. And the reason is because your brain is saying like, hey, here's this thing you give a lot of attention to. And you feel good when it buzzes and beeps and you get a notification. So we're essentially almost mistakenly going to predict that because that's what we're locked onto, okay? Now, if I take that phone away, what happens?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
is you probably feel a little bit of discomfort.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Yeah. Your brain, your inner voice goes crazy. I experienced it. We all experienced it. Okay. Okay. If we wanted to turn down that alarm, what would we do? We'd take our phone for a small bit and we'd say, okay, I'm gonna, for an hour, I'm gonna leave it in the other room. And at first, what would happen? Your brain would go crazy. I'm spiraling out of control. What if someone's getting at me?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
But if you left it for that hour, at some point, your brain would let go and say, you know what? I'm gonna see it at an hour. The world isn't gonna end. And that right there is training toughness for discomfort.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You're actually training your presence and your mental toughness in a way that helps you not only for dealing with your phone, but everything else in life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I think the most powerful thing you can do to develop mental resilience is time spent alone in your head. When we make our inner world seem foreign, when we make our inner world seem like a threat, like it's distant from who we are, then our brain reacts accordingly. And it says, oh my gosh, I'm alone in my head. Because being alone with your thoughts is kind of foreign and threatening.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
If you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to tell you, pick something. Doesn't matter what it is. Pick something where phone's at the side. It's just you alone with your thoughts for a short period of time because that's how you navigate things. And in fact, the late, great Kobe Bryant put this brilliantly when he was talking about youth basketball practices.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
He had his daughter's youth basketball practice. Someone was yelling at their kid what to think about and what to do from the sideline. And Bryant said, I told that parent, this is the key moment. Your kid is learning how to be alone with their head and negotiate in their head. That's where we learn how to be tough. You don't want them to focus on external things.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You, the parent, screaming at them because chances are they're not going to listen to you in the game. They need to learn this skill. So it doesn't matter if it's sport or life, figure out something where it's you alone in your head and give yourself just a little bit of time and space and that'll create toughness.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I got the job for what was then called the Nike Oregon Project, which was essentially Nike sponsored an elite track and field team where literally the goal was to win Olympic championships. And you land this at 26? You're one of the coaches? I was the assistant coach, 26, the youngest professional coach in the sport, fresh out of graduate school. I thought I had hit the freaking lottery.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I was told, I was like, you know what? This goes well. You're going to be, this program is going to be yours. You're going to lead this. these professional athletes. And let me tell you, in running, this is really rare because there's only a handful of professional teams that do this at this level. And it was with the premier sporting goods company in the world.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I thought I had my dream job. I told everyone I had my dream job. My parents were like, oh, thank God. We are set. Steve is killing it. And then months into it, I started to see things that raised some red flags.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Or I started to see some documents that suggested from the sports scientists at Nike that suggested there was some cheating going on, some nefarious things going on that didn't fit the rules of the sport. And at first... I remember calling my parents in the stairwell at Nike and saying, hey, I just saw this document that mentioned testosterone medication, which is a banned substance in sport.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And they're like, oh, no. And at first you rationalize it because you're like, this is where I want to be. This is it. But eventually what happened is it just gnawed at me. And going back to asking that question, who do you want to be?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I have a clear view of how I see myself in terms of ethics and morals and what I want out of sport, especially a sport like running where no one gets in it to become a millionaire. You get in it for the love of the competition itself to try and make that Olympic dream that you have as a kid. And I came face to face where I had a decision where do I keep going and keep my quote unquote dream job?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Or do I stick to my ethics and morals and values and quit and essentially blow the whistle?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
The lesson that really astonished me in working with elite performers, first athletes, and then across the board, is that all of us get in our own way. And all of us are capable of more, but we let fear, anxiety, self-doubt, that voice in our head, tell us, hey, let's avoid this thing. Let's stop doing this thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Months. I mean, it took me months at first to... decided to quit. And then once I left, it took me months to actually blow the whistle and tell somebody. There was this deep inner feeling, this gnawing away that just kept occurring where I was like, gosh, I can't live with this feeling. This isn't who I am. And then more so, I'd see other people who were like me, young,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And probably we're sitting there thinking, I got the dream job and we're headed out there. And I couldn't help myself but thinking, oh my gosh, they have no idea what they're getting into. They have no idea what decisions they're going to face or what the environment is like. And those feelings were what eventually pushed me to say, okay, what can I live with? Like, again, who do I want to be?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Do I want my values to be slogans? Or do I want them to be things that I can look at and say, deep down, they mean something. And eventually what happened, again, I didn't even tell anybody this. I just said, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to blow the whistle. I wrote a long email to US Anti-Doping, who is a regulatory body, and said, here's everything I know. Let's talk.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Let's start that process. And it was the most scared I'd ever been in my life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It was just this experience where you're like, I kind of know what I'm getting into, but I have no idea. And my life is about to turn upside down. And I'm going to lose a little bit of control over my life because this other thing is going to, potentially dominate it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And again, I'm some shy introvert who just wants to coach some people, help people perform well, and then go home and sit at home and read a good book. And I was like, that's not going to be possible. And it wasn't. I had reporters who came to my house and stalked it, followed me at work.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I had the FBI show up as I was backing out of the garage of my house and knock on the car window and show me some badges like I'm in a movie. And... It was just stuff that I couldn't even imagine, but there was no other possibility except I had to figure out how to navigate it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
The head coach and the head doctor of the program had a ban from the sport. And positive change came out of it where people, A, understood, and then I think some increased safety and guards to make sure that that didn't happen in the future occurred. But it took 10 years to go from hitting send on that email, essentially,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
to when the final appeal happened because there were lawyers and all sorts of things and evidence. And I had to turn over my computer and phone and have everyone go through everything I'd ever written. It was the most trying, more than any experience I'd had in sport or life. It pushed me to the max of...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And what I promise you today is I might not be able to fix all of your problems, but I'm going to give you the tools to lighten the load, to be able to navigate that inner voice, to be able to switch stress from seeing it always as a threat. but as something that can challenge you and propel you forward and how to work with your brain and body instead of fighting against it endlessly.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
How do I keep my sanity and not lose who I am and not let that kind of negativity spiral take over? Because there are absolutely points where I'm like, I've lost control of my life. What did it teach you? If you would have outlined everything that I would have had to go through before I hit send on that email, I would have said, no way in hell. Because it was tough. But...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
it taught me that we're always capable of more. And the other thing that I think it really brought home is that, two things, is that we get to write our own story. So even though it felt like... I'd lost control of my life. I was in charge. I got to say, you know what? Whatever. Who cares what the external world sees? What matters to me? How am I judging myself on this?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
How am I defining my life based on this? How do I want to integrate this experience into the story I'm telling about myself? And the last thing, and I think most important thing is, is that I realized that toughness is not the stoic individual pursuit that we often portray it as. It is not the individual hero in the movie. It takes a village and it takes support.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And if you don't have loved ones and the support and the friends who are gonna say, you know what, Steve, I see you're struggling. I'm here for you, whatever that means. I'd get those texts, I'd get those calls. And sometimes I'd take them up on it. And sometimes just seeing that text reminds you like, okay, I'm not alone. I've got people in my corner.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I think that's what it is, is that when we talk about doing tough things, is maybe the answer is we talked about a lot of tools and tips, but it's making sure that you have genuine people who love and support you surrounding you. Because if you do, they're going to be the people who allow you to handle the challenges and who are there when you can't use any of the tips and tricks.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You just need a shoulder literally to cry on or a hug to support you, to make you realize that it's going to be okay. Life will work out. What are your parting words? My parting words for you, the listener, is that you can do this. You've got this. You're capable of more. And that capability doesn't mean doing something heroic.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It just means taking the next small step towards the challenge that you want to embrace. That's what it is, is consistency over intensity. And if you can take that small step, then you're going to build the momentum to change who you are and what your pursuit is.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Thank you. I try to do the best that I can and show up who I am and help people in how I can, so...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
She represented the U.S. at a half marathon world championships. No big deal.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You two are going to have really fast kids.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Don't put the pressure on our two-year-old now.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Yeah, I do too. And I'm a writer. We're both writers. This is bad.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Wow. You guys make it so easy, though.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
I think let's start with the opposite, which is the external.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And I think the external is this, is when we tie our identity to our achievements. In fact, there was a meta-analysis, a study of studies, including 70,000 people, that shows that when we prioritize and emphasize the external more than the internal, it is, and I quote, universally detrimental to our well-being. So the inside game is opposite of that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
is having clarity in who you are, why you're pursuing something. It's understanding that you get to define what success means. It means that instead of just fitting in, you find deep, genuine connection and belonging to those who you're going on this journey with.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And when we find that, when we go towards that, what happens is instead of insecurity driving the ship, we feel secure enough to take risks to take on challenges, to see, again, what we're capable of and, you know, do the things that we want to pursue.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Absolutely. I'll give you a story. Okay, give me a story. So Sarah Hall is one of America's top marathoners. Okay. She's one of the best in the world. And she reached that level later in her career than normally, in her late 30s, early 40s is when she had her breakthrough. And I got to work with Sarah for a number of years.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And what I learned from her is the race she had her ultimate breakthrough where she set the American record in the half marathon. So fastest half marathon in American history for a woman. And leading up into that race, she had this, I'm going to set this record. I'm paying attention to the outcome. I'm going with the external thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And about a month or two before the race, she said, you know what? This is getting in the way. I need to leave this behind. And to quote her, she said, it is stealing my peace. And instead, what I'm going to focus on is I'm going to focus on the feeling.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And she defined the feeling as, I want to get in that race, be surrounded by a bunch of other women, not be threatened by them, but realize that we're all bringing out the best in each of us. And if I put myself in that spot and I enjoy that, great things are going to happen. And to me, like, that's what it is.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
You're seeing one of the best in the world telling you that the way that you set the record isn't to obsess over the record, but to let go just enough and focus on that internal feeling and sensation and that security, knowing that you can take that risk. And if you fail, it's not going to be the end of the world because you got to feel that experience. You got to go through that journey.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It is. I mean, that's the essence of what we call flow in sports psychology, which is that feeling of like everything clicks. You cannot pressure your way into flow. If you feel exceedingly amounts of pressure, you can't get in that state.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So ironically, sometimes we try too hard in that trying, that wanting the thing is what is preventing us from actually getting that goal because we're trying to force it. I had a really good track coach who was a mentor who was the track coach of Carl Lewis. And he told me one day, he said, Steve, most people have the wrong concept of effort.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
They think effort means digging down, trying harder, and forcing yourself. And he said, no, no, effort is like Carl. And what he meant by that is, if you watch Carl Lewis Sprint or Usain Bolt, they are going all out, but their cheeks are bouncing up and down. Sometimes they're smiling a little bit. They're relaxed doing it because real effort is quiet.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
It's how do we get the most out of ourselves while being calm and relaxed doing it. And it's that kind of like paradox where we think we want to like try and dig, but whenever we do that, it backfires. It's probably the same if I sat down to write. If I said, hey, I need to write this wonderful paragraph that's gonna shock everyone and get them latched on to what I'm talking about.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
That paragraph isn't gonna be good, right? I've got to put myself in that position on the chair and say, hey, I've done the research. I'm a pretty good writer. Trust myself to figure it out.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So you mentioned that I have two under two. What's two under?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
Two kids under two. So... My almost two-year-old has hit the stage where she's throwing tantrums. And my wife is also an elementary school teacher, so she's an expert on kids throwing tantrums. And if we look at why do kids throw tantrums, here's what occurs. Two-year-old maybe sees something that she wants. Mom and dad say, no, no, no. She doesn't quite grasp the concept of no. She wants it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
She sees it. She gets frustrated or angry or mad. And because those emotions and feelings are overwhelming and kind of foreign for a two-year-old, right? She goes into like freak out mode, which eventually runs it course and then she shuts down. Toughness is navigating that freak out. We experience the same thing as adults, except it has more layers.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
So we feel discomfort or stress or anxiety or fatigue or whatever it is, that emotion and that feeling. And then we bring in the layer of our voice tends to go with it. So our voice starts to get negative and spiral and think about, oh, I can't do this. If I don't win this race or finish this or get this job, I'm going to be embarrassed. we just spiral out of control.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
And what happens is your brain gets the message. It says, hey, we've got overwhelming emotions. We've got a negative voice that is spiraling. How do we escape this situation? And our brain doesn't go, how do we get the best result out of this situation? It says, how do we get out of this right now? The quickest moment possible. If I'm running a race, the quickest thing is just slow down or stop.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential
If I'm trying to finish my dissertation or nursing exam or whatever, the quickest thing is procrastinate, like leave this, don't come back to it because that'll alleviate it in the moment. And what real toughness to me is navigating it. How do we understand our inner world and those emotions so that they don't overwhelm us?